A great living author, who had a decent regard for his own works, could never have made or passed this slovenly Folio.  Yet Mr. Greenwood argues that probably Bungay was still alive and active, after Shakspere was dead and buried. (Mr. Greenwood, of course, does not speak of Bungay, which I use as short for his Great Unknown.) Thus, Richard iii from 1597 to 1622 appeared in six quartos.  It is immensely improved in the Folio, and so are several other plays.  Who made the improvements, which the Editors could only obtain in manuscripts?  If we say that Shakespeare made them in Ms., Mr. Greenwood asks, “What had he to work upon, since, after selling his plays to his company, he did not preserve his manuscript?” {216a} Now I do not know that he did sell his plays to his company.  We are sure that Will got money for them, but we do not know what arrangement he made with his company.  He may have had an author’s rights in addition to a sum down, as later was customary, and he had his regular share in the profits.  Nor am I possessed of information that “he did not preserve his manuscript.”  How can we know that?  He may have kept his first draft, he may have made a fair copy for himself, as well as for the players, or may have had one made.  He may have worked on a copy possessed by the players; and the publisher of the quartos of 1605, 1612, 1622, may not have been allowed to use, or may not have asked for the latest manuscript revised copy.  The Richard iii of the Folio contains, with much new matter, the printer’s errors of the quarto of 1622.  I would account for this by supposing that the casual Editor had just sense enough to add the new parts in a revised manuscript to the quarto, and was far too lazy to correct the printer’s errors in the quarto.  But Mr. Greenwood asks whether “the natural conclusion is not that ‘some person unknown’ took the Quarto of 1622, revised it, added the new passages, and thus put it into the form in which it appeared in 1623.”  This natural conclusion means that the author, Bungay, was alive in 1622, and put his additions and improvements of recent date into the quarto of 1622, but never took the trouble to correct the errors in the quarto.  And so on in other plays similarly treated.  “Is it not a more natural conclusion that ‘Shakespeare’” (Bungay) “himself revised its publication, and that some part of this revision, at any rate, was done after 1616 and before 1623.” {217a}

Mr. Greenwood, after criticising other systems, writes, {217b} “There is, of course, another hypothesis.  It is that Shakespeare” (meaning the real author) “did not die in 1616,” and here follows the usual notion that “Shakespeare” was the “nom de plume” of that transcendent genius, “moving in Court circles among the highest of his day (as assuredly Shakespeare must have moved)—­who wished to conceal his identity.”

I have not the shadow of assurance that the Author “moved in Court circles,” though Will would see a good deal when he played at Court, and in the houses of nobles, before “Eliza and our James.”  I never moved in Court circles:  Mr. Greenwood must know them better than I do, and I have explained (see Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Shakespeare, Genius, and Society) how Will picked up his notions of courtly ways.